I want to tell you a few things about this week. This week is as
one day, according to the Typicon. So it is as if Pascha is an entire week. So for
that reason we don’t fast today, nor do we fast tomorrow or Tuesday or
Wednesday or Thursday or Friday or Saturday or Sunday. No fasting for the entire
week. All foods are allowed. Tofu is forbidden. Even bean, you know the bean
hamburger things, they’re forbidden. Okay? They are like anathema. All foods
are allowed for this week.

Also, now, during this week we say Paschal hours for our prayers instead of morning
and evening prayers. We don’t read the Psalter at all. If you saw in the
service, the only verses of the Psalter that were used were when we were singing the
Stichera. The penitential verses of the Psalter are not read. We don’t read
Psalm 50 the entire week. We don’t read Psalm 118 which is normally read every
day. We don’t read any of the Psalter except the portions that are for the
Prokeimena or for the “Lord I have cried.”

So the Paschal hours[1] are in
your prayer book whether it is an English one or in Slavonic. Use these Paschal
hours; it takes about six minutes to sing them, maybe five and a half minutes to read
them; I don’t know, not as long and if you cannot sing, read; that’s
fine. There is beautiful theology in these prayers, and they are short and very
sweet. So read the Paschal hours in the morning and in the evening for the entire
week.

All the serving that’s done for Vespers, for matins, for liturgy in every
Orthodox Church in the world for this week is always in full vestments as if
I’m serving at liturgy because of the festivity of the season.

The doors are open. The Royal doors and the deaconal doors are open in every Orthodox
Church in the world for the entire week. They are only closed after the ninth hour on
Saturday according to some, but Bishop Peter has told me about another rubric which
we follow – to close them after the Small Entrance in Vespers.

I make a note about this, because this is always a very sad day
for me because the doors have to be closed, not because God’s mercy ends for
us, but because we being fallen, being people that are easily distracted, we cannot
take so much grace. We are not ready for the grace that God wishes to give to us, so
when the doors are closed it is a profound theological statement. It is not that
God’s mercy is shut off from us – No, not at all, but we, because we are
immature, are not able to hold onto all of God’s mercy. So for a time
God’s mercy shines especially bright in all of the services and in this week.
But if it were like that every week then we would fall away from Him because we do
need rigor. We do need fasting. We do need repentance and penitence because of our
nature, not because God requires it of us but because without that kind of
rigor that we just went through in the fasting of Great Lent we would not be able to
become good and know God Who is good.

We have started reading the Gospel of John and the Acts of the Apostles, and they
will be read all throughout the Paschal period. And I explained why we read the
Gospel of John for Pascha because of course, to know the Resurrection, we have to
know Jesus Christ and Saint John more than anyone else ever has explained who Jesus
Christ is. There are symbols for the evangelists, and his is the eagle because he
soars high above on the wings of theology. Truly, his language, from a grammatical
standpoint, is the simplest and, yes, from a theological standpoint it is the
deepest.

So we read the Gospel of John during the Paschal period because,
as I explained, it is the church’s strategy or the church’s tradition
that when we have a feast we explain more about it later. And so this entire Paschal
period, Paschal is really being explained to you in all of the services, in all
the hymnology and in the Gospel of John.

And then of course we read the Acts of the Apostles. And why
would that be? With Pascha, the Church was strengthened. Some people would say that
the Church began on Pentecost. I personally don’t think that that’s true
because I believe that Joseph and Abraham and Isaac, all those holy fathers are part
of the Church. But the strengthening of the Church, to be able to spread to the
entire universe was accomplished on Pentecost, but there would be no Pentecost
without the Resurrection. So the beginnings of the Church as a universal entity are
really with Pascha when the disciples were gathering together in the upper room
praying.

Now for this first 50 days after Pascha they were afraid because they didn’t
know what was going to happen and as I explained yesterday, the Resurrection comes to
us a little bit by little bit, not all in a flash like the Lord resurrected, but a
little bit by little bit so the Apostles only with the coming of the Holy Spirit at
Pentecost really understood all things and had the power to proclaim the Gospel to
all of mankind.

It would be a very good exercise for all of you to read from the
Gospel of John and the Book of Acts. If you pick one, do the Gospel of John and read
it every day. If you can read a paragraph, if you can read a chapter, if you can read
the daily readings, that’s fine too. Read the Gospel of John so that you
complete it throughout the Paschal period. It is truly a remarkable book, and
it’s the kind of book that you must read literally a hundred thousand times to
fully understand. So every time you read it, something new will come out to you that
is important for your salvation. So read the Gospel of John and read the Acts. But if
you have to pick one, you only have so much time or so much energy or so much zeal,
read the Gospel of John.

The theme during this period of time is about enlightenment, gradual
enlightenment. We see it already with the Gospel here about Thomas[2]. Right
now we only hear the first half of the story. The second half will be this coming
Sunday, and the first half, as Thomas said, “Unless I see the prints of the
nails, the holes in his hand and in his side and unless I put my finger in them, I
won’t believe.” And so for eight days he anguished because his fellow
friends, the Apostles, the women that had been around Jesus, they believed, but
Thomas didn’t. But he was faithful, and his faithfulness would be rewarded. So
that on Sunday we will proclaim him as the first to declare unequivocally the two
natures of Jesus Christ when he said, “My Lord and my
God.”

During this entire Paschal period up until Pentecost we do not say “0 Heavenly
King. . .“ Why would that be? Why would it be that we do not say
“0, Heavenly King. . .“? Anybody know? Well, sometimes the Church speaks
about something and teaches us and sometimes they do not speak about something and
teach us. “0 Heavenly King, Comforter. . .“, is about the Holy Spirit,
and we are asking Him to come and abide in us. Well, what is going to happen in fifty
days? The Holy Spirit will come and abide in us, liturgically, at Pentecost, the
coming of the Holy Spirit. So the lack of this prayer is reminding us of the
greatness of the coming of the Holy Spirit. That’s why we omit this prayer and
we substitute instead of it “Christ is risen” three times, and then when
we get to Ascension, then we substitute the Ascension Troparion for those days until
Pentecost. So don’t say “0 Heavenly King. . .“

Oh, by the way, no prostrations either. There are no
prostrations until Pentecost also and that is to recall the joy of the season.

See, there’s a rhyme and a reason to the things the church
does. There is a deep theological significance to some of these deeply held
traditions. Why we prostrate at certain times and why we don’t at others. Why
we eat all foods on some occasions and do not eat most foods on others. So we are not
prostrating, nor are we saying “0 Heavenly King”.

There’s a few other liturgical things if you really understand the services for
instance, I will just say one. In matins we’ll always sing, “Having
beheld the Resurrection of Christ. . .“ three times on the Sunday vigil,
whereas normally it’s sung once. And there is a bunch of other little
differences, but the important ones for you are you don’t fast this week, you
don’t prostrate until Pentecost. You don’t say “0 Heavenly King. .
.“ until Pentecost, and you sing “Christ is risen” every day, and
you say the Paschal hours and rejoice.

As is usual, I have to tell you as a pastor, to warn you, that
this is a period of time when the devil who is that roaring lion, is looking about
for whom he can devour[3], and
you know he devours a lot of people with summer sausage and with

bacon and with butter and all of the delicacies that we have not
had before. Don’t eat too much of that. Eat them and enjoy them but don’t
gorge yourself so that you still can pray.

You don’t pray as much but you should pray consistently the Paschal hours in
the morning and in the evening. And rejoice in the Resurrection in that way.

We have services this week. Tuesday vigil for the Annunciation so it will be like a
Paschal vigil and sort of mixed in with Annunciation there is a complex service and
very joyous so that vespers and matins and the first hour on Tuesday night at seven
and then Wednesday morning at nine o’clock. At nine o’clock will be the
Annunciation Paschal liturgy. So if you can at all come to the service, you should
because it is well worth it to take a few hours off of work to be able to do
this.

Also, Thursday evening in the new temple which will be close to done by then[4]. I
don’t know if we’ll make it for Thomas
Sunday or not, most likely not. So we are aiming for the Myrrh Bearers, the third
Sunday of Pascha. We will have on
Thursday evening as is our custom, at seven o’clock, Moleben.

This time it’s a Paschal Moleben. Everything is different this week; all the
services include “Christ is risen.”

So the services this week are Tuesday seven o’clock, the vigil for the
Annunciation. If you can come to part of it you should come. If you can come to all
of it you should come but come to some of it. And Wednesday at nine o’clock,
the liturgy and the Paschal and Annunciation kind of mixed up and then Thursday, the
Moleben at seven o’clock.

Do I need to tell you anything else? Oh, yes I need to tell you one other thing. We
have a letter here that I’d like each one of you to take and was written with
my blessing sort of as a collaborative effort. Mostly Father Nicholas wrote it and as
I usually do, I added a couple of things. The gist of it is this. We’re happy
to report we have raised as part of our fundraising efforts since June of 2009, 42
thousand dollars, and we were aiming for 40. And we actually at the time naively
thought that 40 was enough. Turns out that more like 60 is enough, or something like
that. So we need about another 20 thousand dollars.

I want to tell you, we have offered to our benefactors that we
would pray for them eternally as long as this parish exists, we will pray. After my
death and the next rector, we will pray because they are permanent dyptichs. And we
have 391 names that we pray for regularly now and 98 benefactors. And that number
changes, continually increases.

So there is good news that although we need about 20 thousand dollars that we
don’t have, we have an anonymous donor that has come forward and wishes to sort
of get some activity and interest and zeal among our parish family, to raise eight
thousand dollars. This donor has pledged eight thousand dollars in matching funds.
Okay, the way this works is this. The clergy are not part of the matching funds. So
Father Nicholas and I cannot give to this fund in order to have it matched but if you
give, you give one hundred dollars, it is matched with one hundred dollars. If you
give a thousand it is matched with a thousand dollars, up to eight thousand dollars
which means if we are zealous, we would have 16 thousand dollars which is very close
to what we need. With some other things coming in, we would probably be able to do
it.

So what I would ask you to do is take this letter and give yourself and ask others to
give and to designate that it is for the matching funds and we can raise this money
then. It’s a lot easier to raise eight thousand dollars than it is to raise
16.

So may God bless you, take this letter and now let’s
feast, what do you say? I don’t think there was any tofu in there at all. Okay.
Let’s go bless it.

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[4] We
actually occupied our temple officially in June of that year. It was a very long,
arduous and often disappointing building process, with many extra expenses because
of city regulations, and I still do not know how we accomplished it, except that,
as was said in one of the Bright week Gospel readings: “The wind bloweth
where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it
cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.”
(John 3:8, read on Bright Thursday, John 3:1-15. See homilies
about Jesus’ encounter with Nicodemus here: http://www.orthodox.net/sermons/index.html#WEEKDAY_READINGS_DURING_PASCHALTIDE
)